Activists Tore Down A Statue Of Junipero Serra In Solidarity With Black Lives Matter

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California might not have any Confederate statues, but we do have plenty of monuments to Junipero Serra, widely known as the "father" of the California Missions. The story of the mass destruction of the Native population in California is less prevalent in the history books.

On Saturday, a group of Native activists tore down the statue of Serra on Olvera Street.

LA Taco producer Memo Torres captured a video:

The statue was torn down with a rope around the neck, it's head splashed with blood-red paint. As the statue lay on the ground, Native children used it as a bench.

Activists tore down a Serra statue in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park last week,as well as a statue of Francis Scott Key, author of the American anthem, "The Star Spangled Banner," who was a known slave owner.

Serra was a Spanish priest, who came to what was then Alta California (part of Mexico), to spread Catholicism to the indigenous population. (Here in L.A. that was mostly people from the Tongva tribe. And by "spread" Catholicism, we actually mean force it upon them.

Serra eventually spearheaded 21 missions on the coast, from San Diego to San Francisco. The missionaries were responsible for the ultimate destruction of Tongva culture. Tongva people who joined the missions in California essentially became slaves, forced to do manual labor. They suffered from disease, many of the women were raped, and thousands died or were killed. Those who resisted and remained in the countryside often starved, as their hunting grounds were turned into farms by the colonizers.

Joel Garcia, a Monument Lab Fellow, and Native artist, said he and fellow activists behind the Olvera action are a community of various tribal nations, including those native to California -- Tongva, Tataviam, Chumash, and Acjachemen -- along with allies from various racial and ethnic communities.

"This is our way of supporting our Black Lives Matter folks," Garcia said. The group supported Justice L.A. Now in 2017, installing prison beds as public art projects around the city to protest the expansion of the L.A. County jail system.

Garcia was also involved in talking down the Columbus statue in Grand Park in 2018. He said his educational background includes specific knowledge of installing and de-installing art and that the group is planning more statue removals.

"The Tribal Nations of this area also want the Serra statues up at the San Fernando Mission and around the counties here in Southern California [to come] down," he told LAist via email.

The group said the act of removing the Serra statues is meant to remind the public that racial justice and Indigenous rights are inextricably linked:

Garcia said that Serra saw conversion to Catholicism by any means necessary as his calling, an attitude that contributed to ethnic cleansing of Native people and the eventual genocide of Indigenous people in the U.S.

Pope Francis canonized Serra in 2015. Some 50 different tribes in California condemned the sainthood, according to Deborah A. Miranda, author of "Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir," a book about her ancestors' experiences in the Spanish missions. She is a member of the Ohlone Costanoan Esselen Nation of California.

The activist group pointed to this quote from author and poet Miranda:

This isn't the first time Serra monuments have been vandalized. In 2017, a Serra statue outside the Santa Barbara Mission was decapitated and covered in blood-like red paint. Another lost its head in Monterey. Another in Mission Hills was tagged with the word "murderer."

MORE READING:

• How To Participate In Our Race In LA Series

• Should We Celebrate the Legacy of Junípero Serra, California's Founding Father?

• Pope Wants To Canonize The Controversial Man Who Brought Missions To California

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